edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: http://bit.ly/8MbfSV call for proposals for the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2010 in-world conference

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: http://bit.ly/8MbfSV call for proposals for the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2010 in-world conference

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: Women in Games conference - 25-26th March 2010 - Bradford. http://www.womeningames.com/

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: Women in Games conference - 25-26th March 2010 - Bradford. http://www.womeningames.com/

edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: Two technology-enhanced learning advisors needed at Thames Valley http://www.tvu.ac.uk/the_university/Jobs.jsp

edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: Two technology-enhanced learning advisors needed at Thames Valley http://www.tvu.ac.uk/the_university/Jobs.jsp

Links for 2010-01-21 [del.icio.us]

• Sorry - no time...
  The hyperlink as the tangent time-wasting scourge of the modern world?
• THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2010 — Page 3
  The only sensible strategy is an eclectic path to define quality of life for yourself, and use all tools in whatever customized fashion to forge your path. In other words: the planet is in shambles, but you can try to help and still carve out a meaningful, peaceful & happy existence on it.
• How to bring a product to market

Kayaks vs Canoes: George Dyson on how media literacy has really changed

Links for 2010-01-19 [del.icio.us]

• Using Mangahigh at Lourdes Secondary, engaged and motivated on Twitpic
  Using Mangahigh at Lourdes Secondary, engaged and motivated
• How computer games discovered virtuous reality - Gaming, Gadgets & Tech - The Independent
  A superb outline of "serious gaming" environment, and then a rundown of some work in schools: "Within a modern school, that time has already arrived: every single pupil was born into a world where video games were simply a fact of life, and it's in this environment and among these pupils that the serious potential of video games suddenly starts to seem less a novel possibility than a creeping inevitability. Until 1999, Derek Robertson was a primary school teacher in Scotland. "I still am at heart," he says, when we first speak in March 2009, although his official job title has moved on considerably. Since June 2008 he has boasted the title of National Adviser for Emerging Technologies and Learning in Scotland. It's largely thanks to him that Scotland now leads the world in the emerging field of what Robertson calls "games-based learning"."

Links for 2010-01-20 [del.icio.us]

• Article Dashboard Directory | Submit Articles | Search Find Free Content | Author Submission
• Article Search Engine Directory: GoArticles.com
• EzineArticles Submission - Submit Your Best Quality Original Articles For Massive Exposure, Ezine Publishers Get 25 Free Article Reprints
• Training and Development Agency for Schools – national CPD database
• Nymbler - Your Personal Baby Name Assistant
  Nymbler makes name connections with insights from baby-naming expert Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard.
• See Dick And Jane Streets « Weather Sealed
• How To Crowdsource Grading | HASTAC
  I can't think of a more meaningless, superficial, cynical way to evaluate learning in a class on new modes of digital thinking (including rethinking evaluation) than by assigning a grade. Top-down grading by the prof turns learning (which should be a deep pleasure, setting up for a lifetime of curiosity) into a crass competition: how do I snag the highest grade for the least amount of work? how do I give the prof what she wants so I can get the A that I need for med school? That's the opposite of learning and curiosity, the opposite of everything I believe as a teacher, and is, quite frankly, a waste of my time and the students' time. There has to be a better way . . .
• The Art of Generating Buzz : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum
  Buzzing is in our genes. We are programmed to share information with friends about where to find our next meal and about the tiger who’s about to have us as his next meal. We talk to connect, so when my daughter tells her friends about the new sweater she bought, she’s also establishing and maintaining her social ties. We buzz to talk about ourselves: if I tell you about a ten-day dog sledding trip in Alaska, I’m also telling you how adventurous I am.
• Thanks for the Add. Now Help Me with My Homework - News Features & Releases
  In research stemming from her doctoral thesis at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Greenhow not only found an increasing awareness by Sommers and other students of the potential of these sites to express their creativity and explore their interests, but also the potential to complement lessons in more formal educational settings -- if teachers can just figure out how to use them. The kind of skills students are developing on social networking sites, says Greenhow, are the very same 21st century skills that educators have identified as important for the next generation of knowledge workers -- empathy, appreciation for diversity of viewpoints, and an ability to multitask and collaborate with peers on complex projects. In fact, despite cautionary tales of employers trolling social networking sites to find inappropriate Halloween pictures or drug slang laced in discussion forums, many employers are increasingly using these sites as a way to find talent.
• The iPhone reaches into the crib - Times Online
  Dr Rob Jenkins, a cognitive psychologist whose research interests include face perception and social interaction, was closely involved in tailoring the apps to infants’ needs and abilities. Initially, he was sceptical. “My first reaction was, ‘My God, video games for the under-18 months, what a terrible idea.’ But once I spoke to Will and Dave, it became clear that’s not what they wanted,” he says. “It’s not Sonic the Hedgehog getting his claws into young vulnerable minds; it’s about using technology to mediate face- to-face interaction between the carer and the infant. Once we got talking along those lines, I really warmed to it.”

Links for 2010-01-14 [del.icio.us]

• 15 Attractive Javascript Carousel Plugins
• Catch My Fame » CatchMyFame jQuery Plugins
• McIntosh quits C4 to join NE screen agency | News | Broadcast
  Channel 4 digital commissioner Ewan McIntosh has left the broadcaster for a new role supporting digital ventures in the northeast. First major client for http://www.notosh.com

Personal projects are often worth more than professional ones. What's stopping you?

Links for 2010-01-12 [del.icio.us]

• TubeMogul.com | In-Depth Tracking, Analytics for Online Video | Web Video Syndication
  TubeMogul is a free service that provides a single point for deploying uploads to the top video sharing sites, and powerful analytics on who, what, and how videos are being viewed. TubeMogul tracks rich, standardized analytics far beyond "views," including per-second audience dropoff, audience geography and much more.
• Why playing in the virtual world has an awful lot to teach children | Technology | The Observer
  If we are to understand the 21st century and the generation who will inherit it, it's crucial that we learn to describe the dynamics of this gaming life: a place that's not so much about escaping the commitments and interactions that make friendships "real" as about a sophisticated set of satisfactions with their own increasingly urgent reality and challenges. Take the idea of scarcity. In the real world, there isn't enough of everything to go round and people suffer as a result. In the digital world, there is suffusion: anything can be duplicated almost endlessly at negligible cost. We are free to indulge ourselves to the utmost degree. Except, it turns out, people are rather attached to scarcity – and to difficulty, and to hard work, and to all those things that the narcissistic digital realm allegedly teaches us to avoid.
• Supporting Breastfeeding Mothers Demo Now Online | Andy Pulman Edublog
  The package is a high quality, interactive, web-based ‘reusable learning object’, aimed at final year student midwives. Using video narratives of women’s lived experiences of breastfeeding selected from Healthtalkonline, together with other published evidence, students are provided with an enhanced insight about what kind of support is effective, empowering and valued, and what support is regarded as unhelpful, detrimental and disempowering.
• Teachers use 'speed dating' technique to swap ideas at Bett 2010 | Resource | guardian.co.uk
  Teachmeet was an unexpected star of the show two years ago. Over 250 teachers attended late on a Friday night and the Apex room at Olympia was left with standing room only.

The new internet block in education: Financial Filtering

Links for 2010-01-18 [del.icio.us]

• Intelligence redesigned: vintage infographics updated
  You wonder what technology brings to tradition... try this.
• Reinventing British manners the Post-It way
  It might seem bizarre that a company used to designing products is now solving country-sized problems, but it all comes down to the technique it pioneered and preached to its clients. It calls this philosophy "design thinking".
• How to make to-do lists work
  So the vast majority of people who have the luxury of time and choice live in an angst ridden limbo between the options of having everything they're engaged with mapped into a trusted self-management model, or of giving that up and storing everything in their head. Anything in-between is worse than either of those options. Most people live there. Choose.
• WorkSnug
  Helps you visualise where, near you, there are wifi cafés etc.
• iPhone ARider: Futuristic iPhone-based HMD navigation system (video)
  As the 3GS features a compass and is GPS-enabled, all you need to do in order find your way is to move your head (the map app you need to run on the iPhone will rotate accordingly). Obviously, the main point of the ARider is there’s no need to look at the iPhone screen as the map is projected onto the HMD
• Layar
• acrossair | Apple iPhone Development
  Find the nearest anything near to you by looking through your screen
• Hysteria obscures the stuff worth worrying about
  I sometimes think we're going through a media revolution only because this societal shift affects the people who get to decide if we're living through a revolution or not. It's been granted importance because the people it disturbs are media people and opinionistas, those with the loudest voices. If you ask my Mum what the defining character of our times is, she'd say we were living through an Age of Nice Coffee and Garden Centres. If you asked my niece, she'd say it was the Age of Primark.
• Jason Fried of 37signals speaking at Business of Software 2008
  Keep projects short; Planning is overrated; Focus on real things that can be done, rather than abstract documents etc; Decisions are temporary - optimise for now; Interruption is the enemy of productivity - the closer you are to everyone else, the easier it is to interrupt everyone else (taps on the shoulder, required meetings, calling out others' names, phones...). A fragmented day is not a productive day. "Work is not done where you go to work. That's where you get interrupted"; What's important today and in 10 years time? Focus on what you don't think will change;
• Slugger’s new comment system – wireframes « Paulie's notepad
  One of the projects I invested in, Slugger O'Toole, crowdsourcing the (re)design process with its readers

A Perfect Palindrome: The Lost Generation

Links for 2010-01-15 [del.icio.us]

• Welcome to www.sonodrome.co.uk
  The Posc is a battery powered, pocket sized oscillator. It has two square wave oscillators, one of which is controlled by changes in the user's skin resistance over two metal contacts. The pitch of the second square wave oscillator is controlled by manipulating the amount of light received by the light dependent resistor. The whole thing is packaged in a sleek black tin with a handcrafted Walnut face, complete with flashing green Posc emblem. The Posc can be set to work in either stereo or mono output through a standard 1/4" audio jack, so is compatible with a wide range of audio equipment. It is ideal for use with guitar amplifiers and effects pedals, PA systems, and can even be plugged directly into your computer or Hi-Fi audio inputs.
• Build your stuff with our stuff! - Lichfield District Council
  We're always looking for new ways of making it as easy as possible for developers and website owners to access data held by Lichfield District Council in ways that they want - allowing you to remix, mashup and share data easily. Here's a list of what we provide so far, this list is not exhaustive, and we'll be adding more and more datasets as time progresses:
• What We Do | We Are Team Rubber
  We grow successful creative businesses based on great ideas and great people. * We create and nurture teams of great people who come up with smart ideas and get things done. * We create long-term value by generating unique IP assets and taking them to market. * We develop amazing projects and products, and provide outstanding service to clients.
• Meet Bruce Mau. He wants to redesign the world
  "When it comes to changing behaviour, we have 50 years of evidence that going negative doesn't work. For over half a century, environmentalists have scolded us to 'reduce', 'use less', and, most pointedly, to 'get out of your car!' Over all those years, the total number of cars in the world inexorably increased. Last year alone we produced roughly 66 million new cars - adding four times as many cars to our roads as we did in the 60s. Around the world, many cultures and countries may not have fully embraced human rights or secular democracy - but they have embraced traffic. The few outposts that have yet to get cars in large quantity are desperate to have them.
• Rebooting Britain: make policy using prediction markets
  Hubdub.com for guessing the politics of tomorrow: Prediction markets can aggregate many small pieces of information held by large numbers of people from diverse backgrounds. Prediction markets seem to work well because they reward accuracy (rather than the ability to tell a convincing story) and punish error (rather than the voicing of politically inconvenient opinions).
• Heavy illegal downloaders buy more music Boing Boing
  About £33 more per year, in fact
• Bad Science: Illegal downloads and dodgy figures | Ben Goldacre | Comment is free | The Guardian
  I asked what steps they took to notify journalists of their error, which exaggerated their findings by a factor of 10 and were reported around the world.
• Anne Fox :: Blog :: Tax on playfulness?
  Denmark has one of the highest, if not the highest, income tax in the world with a top marginal rate of 61% which it is quite easy to reach. You get a lot for your money but can always argue whether it is enough. Adjustments are always being made. The latest adjustment means that from January 1st 2010 if you have the potential to use the Internet on a digital piece of equipment supplied by your employer (computer, mobile phone etc) then you become liable for a flat rate media tax of 3000Kroner (about 425€) per year. This becomes liable whether or not you use the kit for your own private purposes but if you take home the item for just one night in the year.
• Welcome - North East Movies
  The North East Movies website allows North East based filmmakers to upload, convert and distribute their short films online. It’s also a fantastic place to watch, share and download quality short films from great North East talent.
• Britain thinks – or does it? | Matthew Taylor's blog
  My slightly elitist concern that BritainThinks doesn’t encourage its participants to ask themselves whether their opinion is wanted, useful or soundly based is reinforced by the site’s slogan…. ‘if you’ve got an opinion, here’s where to stick it
• Machinarium

And who are you again? Augmented Reality helps you 'see' a person's social networks

edinburghmsc: via @claraoshea: vacancy: e-learning instructional designer at ICAS http://www.elearningalliance.org/content.asp?ArticleCode=6084

edinburghmsc: via @claraoshea: vacancy: e-learning instructional designer at ICAS http://www.elearningalliance.org/content.asp?ArticleCode=6084

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: RT @A_L_T: Speakers from Google & Yahoo! at ALT/JISC Techdis 'Rewiring Inclusion' Feb 8/9 Nottingham http://is.gd/5LWpn

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: RT @A_L_T: Speakers from Google & Yahoo! at ALT/JISC Techdis 'Rewiring Inclusion' Feb 8/9 Nottingham http://is.gd/5LWpn

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: Early bird tickets for TechCrunch Edinburgh released (with @Startupcafe goodness): http://bit.ly/8IAhGX #startup #edinburgh

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: Early bird tickets for TechCrunch Edinburgh released (with @Startupcafe goodness): http://bit.ly/8IAhGX #startup #edinburgh

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: RT @dmonp: RT @time Can Video Games Save the World? - TIME http://is.gd/5RH4l #IDGBL10

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: RT @dmonp: RT @time Can Video Games Save the World? - TIME http://is.gd/5RH4l #IDGBL10

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: IDGBL10 is live on WebCT!!! Let the games begin! #idgbl10

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: IDGBL10 is live on WebCT!!! Let the games begin! #idgbl10

edinburghmsc: via @claraoshea: vacancy for e-learning instructional designer - http://www.elearningalliance.org/content.asp?ArticleCode=6084

edinburghmsc: via @claraoshea: vacancy for e-learning instructional designer - http://www.elearningalliance.org/content.asp?ArticleCode=6084

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: RT @Eingang: Want to work for Futurelab? Looking for a Learning Research Coordinator (maternity cover) http://bit.ly/8h1Ori

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: RT @Eingang: Want to work for Futurelab? Looking for a Learning Research Coordinator (maternity cover) http://bit.ly/8h1Ori

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: RT @JISC: Students visit Pompeii through their own computers http://bit.ly/7NVJFc

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: RT @JISC: Students visit Pompeii through their own computers http://bit.ly/7NVJFc

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: RT @Eingang: Some 80 universities could lose doctoral programs in UK due to funding. http://bit.ly/8O0XIE

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: RT @Eingang: Some 80 universities could lose doctoral programs in UK due to funding. http://bit.ly/8O0XIE

Links for 2010-01-04 [del.icio.us]

• Library - ADL and DAU Co-authors Share Success of Bite-Sized Gaming at IITSEC
  While interest in using games for training has grown over the last few years the types of games used has changed dramatically. While the industry’s initial attempts at building these games has focused on common and established genres of games such as Real Time Strategy (RTS) games and First Person Shooters (FPS) this is no longer the case. Mini-games for training are no longer relegated to the rote memorization games that were clumsily integrated into conventional Computer-based Training (CBT) in the form of uninspired Flash games. Mini-Games have emerged as an interesting way to integrate learning objective specific pieces of knowledge into an existing training regimen. Peter and Alicia’s paper discusses how the military, academia, and industry can benefit by using bite-sized, game-based training applications citing specific examples being fielded with Defense Acquisition University (DAU), National Science Foundation (NSF), and others.
• Study: Inexpensive Games Improve Children’s Reasoning Ability » Spotlight
  After just eight weeks, children’s reasoning scores, on average, increased by 32 percent, reports Newsweek’s blog NurtureShock. The students all attended an elementary school in Oakland, Calif., with historically low test scores.
• Charlie Brooker: why I love video games | Technology | The Guardian
  "You're in crouch mode," you sigh, as their character waddles comically up the street. "Take it out of crouch mode." Instead they throw a grenade at their own feet, killing themselves and several bystanders. They moan that it's too hard. You force them to try again. Their character respawns. They run against a nearby door and jab at the buttons. "You can't open that door," you offer helpfully. "Why not?" they ask, "I opened another one a minute ago." "That one's just scenery," you sigh. "How do you know?" they say, jabbing all the buttons again. "It just is. Stop it." "Maybe it'll open in a moment," they suggest, jabbing. "It won't."
• Online Fandom » Algorithm Fetishism or What Facebook Gets Wrong
  My Facebook news feed is overflowing with people complaining about the changes to Facebook’s news feed/live feed. They boil down to two complaints (1) the news feed has too little and (2) the live feed has too much. Facebook has also introduced a new form of suggestion — they are prodding us to “reconnect” with people, write on others’ walls, suggest profile pictures for those without them, and other forms of what can only be described as social meddling.This is causing much mockery amongst my peers as well as some horror — one friend reports that her friends have been urged to “reconnect” with a friend who passed away last summer.
• MIT Press Journals - International Journal of Learning and Media - Abstract
  Drawing on Sutton-Smith's description of the rhetorics of play, it argues that the educational value of games has often been defined in terms of remedying the failures of the education system. This, however, ascribes to games a specific ontology in a popular culture that is defined in terms of its opposition to school culture. By analyzing games produced in school by 12- to 13-year-olds in the context of a media education project, the article shows how notions of what a game is emerge from conventionalized and historical relations within a setting, and that the educational value of games can therefore be re-thought in terms of the situated signification of “game” rather than games causing learning. Changing notions of “game” and “play” are therefore highlighted and analyzed in terms of how students position themselves in relation to the teacher, researchers, and their peers.
• Media Cloud
  Media Cloud automatically builds an archive of news stories and blog posts from the web, applies language processing, and gives you ways to analyze and visualize the data.
• 4iP Funds Arts Site Central Station As McIntosh Departs | paidContent:UK
  It’s unclear how, or whether Central Station intends to profit. C4 tells paidContent:UK: “In terms of the business model, we want all 4iP investments to be commercially viable in the long-term. 4iP has a sizeable portfolio now and some are more commercially focused than others but there is flexibility here and given Central Station is an arts project we’re more likely to look at public service impact over long-term profit. However, there’s potential for white label sales of the platform to UK colleges looking for a suitable online platform to offer alumni after they graduate.” Ewan McIntosh - 4iP’s investment commissioner for Scotland, Northern Ireland and the north-east of England, who made this investment - is now leaving 4iP, which he joined in August 2008 and for which he has made a weekly Edinburgh-London commute, to start an as-yet-unnamed venture in January.
• Media, Education and the Marketplace | MIT Video Course
  How can we harness the emerging forms of interactive media to enhance the learning process? Professor Miyagawa and prominent guest speakers will explore a broad range of issues on new media and learning - technical, social, and business. Concrete examples of use of media will be presented as case studies. One major theme, though not the only one, is that today's youth, influenced by video games and other emerging interactive media forms, are acquiring a fundamentally different attitude towards media. Media is, for them, not something to be consumed, but also to be created. This has broad consequences for how we design media, how the young are taught in schools, and how mass media markets will need to adjust.
• Mind Hacks: The myth of the concentration oasis
  The 'modern technology is hurting our brain' argument is widespread but it seems so short-sighted. It's based on the idea that before digital communication technology came along, people spent their time focusing on single tasks for hours on end and were rarely distracted. The trouble is, it's plainly rubbish, and you just have to spend time with some low tech communities to see this is the case. In some of the poorer neighbourhoods Medellín, my current city of residence, there is no electricity. In these barrios, computers, the internet, and even washing machines and telephones don't exist in the average home. Pretty much everything is done manually. By the lights of the 'driven to digital distraction' argument, the residents should be able to live blissfully focused distraction-free lives, but they don't.
• Rowenna Davis on a new virtual bank for teachers to share ideas | Education | The Guardian
  "We should be promoting tools rather than content," says Jenkins. "Students should be encouraged to be critical by remixing, commenting on and sharing the resources they are given. They should be creating their own content. YouTube, Google maps and Pixton offer advantages over traditional resources because they allow students to do those things. I'm worried that this bank won't address the real benefits ICT learning can offer - it's just replacing paper filing cabinets with virtual ones." The NDRB doesn't just have conceptual challenges to meet - it also has practical ones. Every school's digital content has to be gathered and filtered through local authorities and/or national learning grids, a process requiring huge amounts of co-ordination. Although over 100 out of 150 local authorities are already engaged in the project, their enthusiasm will have to be maintained if content is going to be delivered and updated.
• ShirtMullet.com - Flipsaver
  This screensaver was born out of a need. There already was a really nice screensaver out there. However it was not updated to the lastest OSX, Snow Leopard. So I decided to build one myself.
• 10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010
  Worldwide, the iPhone alone accounts for about 33% of mobile web traffic and IDC predicts the number of mobile web users will hit one billion by 2010.